The flaw causes the Token Exchange module to assign all Public API key scopes to any JWT it issues, regardless of the user who submitted the request. A low‑privileged user who can produce or acquire a trusted external JWT can use the resulting access token to call administrator‑only Public API operations such as creating or deleting users, escalating roles, and, when unverified community package installation is enabled, executing arbitrary code on the host.

All n8n instances running n8n versions prior to 2.30.1 or 2.29.8 that have both the Token Exchange feature and the Public API enabled are affected. The impact also applies to installations that allow unverified community package installation, which opens the possibility for remote code execution.

With a CVSS score of 8.9 the vulnerability is high severity, but the EPSS score of less than 1% indicates a low yet non‑zero likelihood of exploitation. The flaw is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. Exploitation requires only that the attacker obtain a trusted external JWT for a configured issuer; once acquired the token can be used remotely to perform privileged API calls without further authentication.